The How Obsession

The Desert of Arizona
Sunny 59 Degrees – 6:57 a.m.

If you had sat me down years ago and said, “Jason, all you have to do to make this work is sit down every day and write an email to people all over the world about what you like to do,” I would have called you crazy.

“Success isn’t that simple. That’s why there are books about it! You have to find the missing action plan, you have to make it happen, you have to follow best practices so you have a chance at making it.”

This approach, dear Reader, appears to be total bunk.

In fact, I will go so far as to say that our current obsession with the HOW of making something work is a trained habit we’ve been offered, a diversion of sorts, to keep us from actually figuring ourselves out.

First, if we believe there IS an ideal or right “how you should do it” path to succeed, then we will begin the search for it.

Go take a look out in the world, you see that most everyone has taken on this idea as truth. When you accept THIS lie as truth, you put all of your power outside you.

And if, by chance, we should actually find that “solution” out there and have it not work, instead of calling into question the entire premise of the journey, we will simply rationalize to ourselves that MUST not have been the right solution. And the search will continue…

I don’t think that’s how we’re designed to create. We’re designed to create by setting our intention on a goal and then moving forward by watching clues.

No one knows what sequence of actions will “get you” where you want to go. So you can stop looking. Start actually trusting yourself for a moment. If you’re not at the point where you can yet trust yourself, then consider this a temporary experiment where you can put this premise of creating progress to the test:

Figure out what you want. Set that intention. And then move forward, one step at a time, based on what clues present themselves to you.

School taught us there was a “right way” to do everything.

Giving up the illusion is the first step to creating just about anything you want.

You control what you want. The “how to make it happen” isn’t something you obsess over.

You allow the how to part to unfold and follow the breadcrumbs as they appear before you.